


Please, Remember Me

by orphan_account



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27498571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A sad one-shot, modeled after a conversation I just had with an ex-boyfriend. Basically, we had dated for six years and to be honest I thought we would get married. We ended things amicably because our jobs took us to different cities and long-distance is a bitch, but then my job relocated me back to where he was. I wanted to remain friends, but it got unbearable for the reasons you'll see. I needed to vent about the conversation we just had, and thought it might be therapeutic to frame it in terms of characters, so while some dialogue is adjusted for Jake and Amy, it's very much my conversation. With a gender-swap, I guess, because I'm Jake and he's Amy in this scenario.The title is part of a lyric from The Trapeze Swinger by Iron & Wine, where the singer asks someone he used to know to remember him. It's a beautiful and haunting song.
Relationships: Jake Peralta & Amy Santiago, Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	Please, Remember Me

Jake was about three-quarters down the street before he heard Amy shouting after him. "Jake! Jake! Jake, stop!," she yelled with her voice getting progressively louder each time she had to say his name. Finally, he stops. 

"What the fuck was that?," she says. "All my friends were in there, you don't just get to storm out and make me look like a jackass in front of them." 

"I'm the jackass?," Jake says. "I was just sitting there, and you were bragging to your friends about your hot new boyfriend. Congratulations, the sex is great, why the fuck do you think I wanted to hear that?"

"It's not like I said it in front of you, Jake. I waited until you went to the kitchen, didn't I?"

"Right, because the walls are so thick," Jake says, rolling his eyes. "You think I need the image of you straddling some other guy in my head? You want me to start talking about me with some other girl? You'd kill me if I started talking about that in front of you!"

"Yeah, I would," Amy said, matter of factly. "But I wasn't saying it in front of you. And I'm not the bad guy here. You were the one who came back. You were the one who wanted to remain friends. We could have just kept being cordial around Mac, but you wanted to go back to being friends. And last I checked before we got together we often discussed our dating lives. I heard all about your creepy dead guy sex for Christ's sakes!"

"That was before we were together, Ames! Not after!," Jake basically screamed back at her. 

"Then what exactly did you expect for us? Why did you want to go back to being friends?," Amy screamed back.

"Because I didn't want you to forget me," Jake yelled at the top of his lungs. That shut Amy up. Not because he made a winning point, but because she honestly didn't quite get it.

Jake softened a little, and took a seat on a nearby bench. No reason to let the entirety of New York City listen to this conversation. 

"I really thought this was the great love story of my life," Jake said, tears forming in his eyes. "We've been through so much together—we survived the Vulture trying to break us up, witness protection, prison, disagreeing about kids. I have so many fond memories of us—saying we loved each other for the first time on that cruise, telling each other we loved each other so much, meeting up on the rooftop of our bet date, proposing to you, marrying you, all of it. I......I hate the thought that all of that love that I thought was bigger than anything else in the world might just be forgotten. That 5 years from now, ten years from now, 20 years from now, you won't really remember all of it. It'll all be gone. And I hate the thought that I might forget those things too."

"Jake," Amy tried to interrupt. She hated to see him in this much pain.

"And I just thought. I don't know what I thought. I know I can't ask you to like think about me every day to make sure you don't forget me. I know how I would have felt if you were thinking about an ex like that when we were together. It would have stung. I can't ask that of you. I was being selfish. I thought that if I remained your friend, then, I don't know, you wouldn't forget all those memories so easily. But then it hurts to see you with someone else, to know you don't want to be with me anymore and are so happy with someone else. I know I'm supposed to be happy the person I love is happy, and I am, really, but it also hurts so bad, because I want to be with you and felt so lucky to be with you, and you don't want to be with me and someone else is as lucky as I used to be," Jake finishes, not even realizing he had launched into a monologue. He was letting out pain he had been carrying for a while now.

Amy doesn't know what to say to him. She gets it, he's jealous. It's not like he wishes that upon him, but she's not going to stop having sex either. She's going to move on. "I'm sorry, Jake. When you said you wanted to be friends, I thought you had moved on. That you didn't feel that jealousy anymore. I wouldn't have agreed had I thought you felt that way still."

"That's probably why I hid it," Jake said, with a sad smirk. He pauses for a few minutes. "Do you think you'll remember me? All those memories? Like, 5, 10, 20, 40 years from now?"

"I don't know, Jake," Amy said. "I mean, I'm not like trying to forget them. Burning the photos or anything. They'll be in the Cloud somewhere. But I'm not actively trying to hold on either. You can't move on by clinging to the past." She pauses. "And you need to move on too."

"I know," Jake said. "It really doesn't bother you, that all of those memories might be forgotten? That our love story might be forgotten?"

"No," she says. She wanted to say something nicer, but relationships come and go. It didn't bother her that memories end. It was just part of life.

Jake sighed. "I think you're right, that we shouldn't be friends right now. I need to....well, I guess I need to forget you for a while and move on. Stop seeing you as my dream girl, as someone I still want to be with. Go back to being cordial around Mac, but not friends per se. And I hope that, when I've moved on, maybe we can be friends. And maybe it'll turn out that we do remember each other after all, years down the line. Is that okay with you?"

"It is, but, Jake, I really can't promise anything. I don't know what makes memories stick. I'm not trying to forget, but I don't know what I'll retain. I just, I know you don't want to hear that, but we promised to spend our lives together and that isn't true, and I don't want to make another promise to you I don't know I can keep."

"I figured as much," Jake said. "I guess I have to live with that. I just think the pain of knowing how love stories end, how they get forgotten, might on balance be less painful than loving someone who doesn't love me back, watching them move on, thinking about them with someone else. It hurts like a bitch when I think about it, but it comes less often, I guess. The other pain hurts every day, every time I see you and wish I could be with you."

Jake gets up to leave. "I just really hope we can be friends some day, and I really hope we remember each other, but I guess I can't control that, and I know I have to let you go for a while."

"I hope so too," Amy says, still on the bench. Jake smiles, she smiles back, and he walks away. Amy has no idea if they'll ever be friends again, like real friends beyond being respectful when handing off Mac, or what they'll remember. But maybe that's just how it is.

**Author's Note:**

> “The saddest thing about love is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.”—William Faulkner.
> 
> Thanks for sharing my pain. I hope I feel better one day.


End file.
